


For a Rainy Day

by Frea_O



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5 Things, Books, Cohabitation, F/F, F/M, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, Literature, New Mexico, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Iron Man 2, Roommates, Shared Living Space, Surprising Insights into Characters, poker game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five books you can find in Maria Hill’s apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For a Rainy Day

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Anuna](http://anuna-81.livejournal.com) for the prompt! This fills in my **5 Things** square for Ladies Bingo 2013.

_Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_

It was a bad idea to let a woman SHIELD was only beginning to trust loose in her apartment, Maria figured, but it was simpler to keep Natasha Romanoff under wraps rather than scatter her to one of the area hotels. So, head aching, Maria shoved her shoulder against the door of her apartment.

Natasha raised an eyebrow.

“I’d put up with a lot worse for rent-controlled,” Maria said, pushing the door open so that the redhead could follow her inside. It wasn’t a big space, but it was generous for city standards, and the water pressure worked most of the time. She kept the decorating to a minimum; other agents claimed it was paranoia that somebody might be able to psychoanalyze her from the state of her living quarters, but truthfully, she didn’t attach herself to much. So she gave Natasha the ten cent tour with a shrug, waving at the empty refrigerator and the sofa and pointing her to the guest bedroom.

“It’s cozy,” Natasha said, which Maria translated as _it’s small_ , but she wasn’t offended. The room was essentially closet-sized. “I shall be comfortable here. Thank you, Agent Hill.”

“Maria,” Maria said, since they were going to be roommates for at least a week. The flooding that had overtaken the first floor of the SHIELD barracks would take at least that long to clean up. “I’m going to call and order something. Any preferences?”

“Thai, maybe?”

“Done.” Maria relented on one of her rules and dry-swallowed two Motrin as she put in the order. In her bedroom, she stripped out of her uniform, pulling on yoga pants and a tee. She expected that Natasha would retreat into the guest room and be mysterious and aloof until it was time to leave for work in the morning. It would be like not having a roommate at all, except that she _did_ have a temporary roommate and said roommate probably knew fifteen ways to dismember her.

When she strolled back into the living room, though, she was surprised to find Natasha, similarly attired to her, on the couch. She had her legs curled up underneath her and a ratty paperback in one hand. “Didn’t take you for a Buddhist,” she said.

“Hmm?” Maria grabbed a bottle of red that she’d been slowly working her way through and poured two glasses.

“I found this in your guest bedroom.” Natasha held up the book when Maria handed over the wine. “Do you even have a motorcycle?”

“God, no. That belonged to my ex.” Maria had forgotten she’d even had _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ on her guest room shelf. She’d attempted to read it a couple of times. “I don’t think it’s actually about fixing motorcycles. You’re welcome to it, though.”

“You keep books in your apartment that you have not read?” Natasha looked genuinely puzzled by this concept.

“I’ll get to them someday.” Maybe, Maria thought. When she wasn’t busy at SHIELD putting out fires all over the world. Natasha still looked perplexed. “Is there something wrong with that?” 

“No. It just seems extravagant, compared to everything I’ve known. Keeping a lot of books was not possible with the life I have led.”

The idea of _someday_ hadn’t been possible, either, Maria understood. She’d been privy to the psych reports they’d completed on Natasha when she had defected to SHIELD. “They’re good for a rainy day,” Maria said. “Not that I get many of those.”

As if it could read her mind, her phone rang. It was Fury, which meant it was important.

“Speaking of which,” she said, “I’d better take this. You’ll have to let me know how the book is.”

“Will do,” Natasha said, and Maria headed into the other room to help put out yet another fire.

 

 

_Mies van der Rohe at Work_

Pepper Potts didn’t make it to Brooklyn much, but Phil had slipped her a card with this address in the chaos of the post-Expo news conferences and media interviews, and Phil Coulson did nothing without a lot of forethought and planning, so here she was, in a neighborhood in Brooklyn that she didn’t recognize. She was buzzed in without comment and had to remind herself on the walk up the three flights that Phil wasn’t in the business of offing people. Probably. And if he was, he’d be so much sneakier about it than inviting her to Brooklyn. At apartment 3-B, she paused, adjusting her coat, and raised her hand to knock.

The door swung open before she could, making her jump back with an “Oh!”

It wasn’t Phil on the other side, but a woman with a build similar to her own. She was dark where Pepper was fair, save for a set of startlingly blue eyes that looked Pepper up and down once. Clear amusement shone in those eyes for a split second. “Didn’t mean to spook you,” the woman said. “I’m Agent Hill. Coulson said to say he’s running late and should be here soon.”

“Pepper,” Pepper said, shaking the woman’s hand. Like Pepper, the woman wore a business suit, though hers was cut far more militarily. “Pepper Potts.”

“Pleased to meet you. Come in.”

Warily, Pepper did so. Was Agent Hill Coulson’s girlfriend? Wife? She’d introduced herself as Agent so she was SHIELD, too, but that didn’t mean anything. Pepper didn’t know much about Phil. That really was something that needed to change, she determined. Especially to keep SHIELD from sending any more honey-pot agents in to infiltrate her organization.

She might be the world’s newest CEO, but she was damned if that was going to happen to her again.

“Something to drink?” Agent Hill asked. “I’ve got beer, water, wine—hard liquor if it’s been that kind of day.”

It honestly had been, with three new lawsuits popping up against Stark Industries, but Pepper accepted a glass of water and took a seat on the couch. “Do you know what this is about?” she asked.

“No, sorry. Coulson’s an enigma to the best of us.” Hill rolled a shoulder in a way that suggested Pepper wasn’t the only one that had a hard day. “Sorry about the mess. My roommate had a last minute trip last night and left the place a wreck, and I only just got in.”

“It’s fine, I don’t want to put you out.” Pepper recognized the signs of a quick tidying: things shoved into corners and books laid atop the coffee table to hide debris underneath. She looked over in surprise when something beeped, but the brunette merely checked the phone clipped to her waist.

Immediately a scowl—which truthfully seemed more natural—overtook the woman’s face. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to deal with this. Uh, Phil said he’d be about ten minutes, tops, but you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen. You’ll be okay?”

Pepper assured her that she would be. The reprieve came as a blessing, as it gave her an opportunity to answer a few emails while the woman strode off, presumably to chew out a subordinate if the look on her face was anything to go by. Pepper pulled out her phone, but stopped, something on the coffee table catching her eye.

The table itself was new and uninteresting, one of those mass-produced pieces of furniture crowding IKEA. The book on top of it, though, was battered and aged, with spidery white lines across the surface. It was a coffee table book— _Mies van der Rohe At Work_ —but it was worn in a way that said it was important. When Pepper paged through, she was amazed to see hand-written notes in the margins, filling in details that the author of the book had evidently omitted.

Agent Hill returned. “These are fascinating notes,” Pepper said, barely glancing away from the book. “Did you write them?”

“My father,” Agent Hill said. The words were empty of emotion in a way that was a red flag to Pepper, who more than understood complicated relationships with family members, fathers in particular. “He had a thing for the German architects.”

When Pepper dared to look up, Agent Hill was openly scowling at the book, though she quickly schooled her expression back to a resting glare. “I’ve always been a fan of the Seagram building,” Pepper said, testing the waters. There had been two sets of handwriting in the book. “I like the functionality of it.” 

“My father was fond of it, though I find it rather cold, which might be considered ironic.” The corner of Agent Hill’s mouth twisted up, but she didn’t get a chance to explain, for there was a polite knock at the door. Pepper leaned forward to get a look around the corner as Agent Hill opened the door, hoping the greeting would give her some sort of clue as to her relationship with Phil.

It didn’t. Agent Hill simply stepped aside to let Phil in, with a nod. “You should give me more of a head’s up when you want to use my apartment as your secret base.” 

Phil held up a takeout bag. “I brought Indian as a peace offering, and a thank you. Miss Potts, hi! Sorry for the cloak and dagger secrecy. Maria’s apartment has the best counter-surveillance measures in New York, so I thought it’d be a good chance for us to talk.”

“Talk about what?” Pepper asked, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“What else? Public relations.” Phil’s smile was affability itself as he sat on the armchair across from Pepper, setting the bag of takeout on a free space on the coffee table.

Stark Industries had been buried in PR nightmares ever since Vanko’s drones had blown up half of Queens. “I had a feeling you were going to say that. Though it doesn’t explain the counter-surveillance necessities.”

“No.” Phil’s eyes twinkled. “Tell me, what do you know about Project Kaleidoscope?”

“Howard Stark’s hunting expedition in the arctic circle? We defunded that years ago. Tony didn’t appreciate the fact that the team’s been coming up empty-handed since the forties.” He also hadn’t wanted that particular legacy, though Pepper wasn’t going to say that. Tony’s issues with his father weren’t something she was willing to share with Phil.

“SHIELD took up the reins,” Phil said, and he exchanged a look with Maria, who was calmly laying out dishes on the coffee table for the three of them.

“And?”

“The hunting expedition found something,” Maria said.

“Some _one_ ,” Phil said, correcting her, and Maria wrinkled her nose at her coworker. “Tell me, Miss Potts, how would Stark Industries feel about providing the technology to retrieve Steven Rogers from the ice?”

“Hold on. Stev—Captain America? You found Captain America in the ice?”

“We found his shield, and that’s all so far,” Maria said, and Pepper looked to Phil, questioningly.

“He’s there,” Phil said. “I know he’s there.”

“Well, his shield is, at any rate.”

Pepper shook her head. “You’d better start from the beginning.”

It took a couple of hours, mostly to sketch out details for the equipment SHIELD would need for the extraction and a temporary base by the coordinates where the downed airship had been discovered. Pepper would have preferred to have Tony’s head for math, though she had a feeling it would have ended in disaster, with Tony building a small city on the ice or shutting the project down entirely, depending on how he felt about his father that day. From Phil, she felt a contained sense of glee, and after an hour in Maria’s company, she began to detect amusement in the other agent, though Maria’s face remained impassive. By the time dinner had been devoured and she was nursing her second glass of wine, they’d worked out details for the expedition, though Pepper would have Legal look it over before she signed any contracts.

“It’s really him?” she asked as she stood to leave. “The real Captain America? He didn’t run away with a Chinese immigrant and live out the rest of his days in Hong Kong?”

“I heard it was Scotland, not China,” Maria said, and Pepper couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not, so she smiled and headed for the door with Phil, who’d arranged for a car to drive her back to the hotel. 

As she was closing the door behind her, though, she caught a glimpse of the other woman picking up the battered Mies van der Rohe book and frowning down at it. Impulse, which wasn’t something Pepper gave into much, overtook her. “Agent Hill?”

“Yes?”

“The Stark wing at the Imperial Museum is hosting an exhibit on early skyscrapers next month. I thought you’d like to know.”

Maria Hill looked utterly baffled for a second, which Pepper imagined wasn’t a common look for her. But she smoothed it away quickly. “I’m not sure what my schedule is like, but that sounds interesting. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Pepper said, and made a mental note to arrange tickets to the opening gala with her PA when she got back to the hotel.

 

 

_A Wrinkle in Time_

Kate Bishop wasn’t sure what was weirder: the fact that she was in Agent Hill’s apartment, or the fact that she was surrounded by adults and that she didn’t mind. Sure, Captain Danvers had taken one look at the beer she’d tried to sneak in and had raised a blonde, unimpressed eyebrow. The look had been enough to send Kate slinking back for a Coke. But that aside, this was a pretty cool group. She could almost forgive Clint for standing her up and stranding her with them. 

“I’ll see your dollar, Agent Romanoff, and I’ll raise you fifty cents.”

Okay, some of it was lame: they weren’t even playing for _real_ money.

There were six of them around the card table in Agent Hill’s kitchen, elbows jostling for space among corn chips, beers (and Kate’s Coke), and poker chips. Four were SHIELD—Agent Hill, Agent Romanoff, Kate the intern, and Darcy had something to do with the science branch—Captain Danvers was Air Force, and Jessica Drew had introduced herself as a private eye, which Kate had no idea if that was true or not. But she seemed pretty cool, so Kate was willing to go with it.

“Whoa,” Darcy snorted. “Big spender, Jess.”

“You’re just trying to get me to raise so you don’t have to and give away those pocket aces, Darce.”

“Who said I have pocket aces?”

“You did, just now,” Natasha said.

Agent Hill—Maria—tossed her cards, face-down. “Pot’s too rich for my blood.”

Kate snorted. It was at less than three dollars.

Maria slanted a look toward her. “Did I ask for commentary from the peanut gallery?” 

“Peanut sprout gallery, more like,” Jessica muttered under her breath.

Natasha snickered. “If that,” she said, and matched Jessica’s bet.

Kate stuck her tongue out at all of them. “You’re all jealous of my youth and precociousness. And superior style.”

“Oh, is that what it is?” Jessica laughed.

“Big words for a woman who showed up in a trench coat.”

“Which I borrowed from Nat.”

Natasha took a swallow of beer, scoffing as she lowered the bottle. “So eager to impress the next generation that you’re throwing me under a bus, Drew?”

“You should just be happy I brought it back in one piece.”

“We’re all ecstatic,” Maria said, her voice completely dry. “Danvers, are you in?”

Darcy frowned. “Wait, are trench coats not cool? Because I’ve had my eye on this one at this little boutique by my place for ages—”

“Bet, Danvers, or we’re going to be here all night,” Maria said, and the pilot laughed.

Kate lost two bucks to Darcy, who had pocket kings rather than pocket aces, and the game went on. Allegiances shifted, changing so rapidly that Kate didn’t bother to keep track. Half of the fun of the game was to start arguments and watch people duke it out, as Maria and Carol did over the merits of Grand Prix racing (not a topic Kate expected either of them to have strong feelings about, though she noticed Natasha’s face darken almost imperceptibly during the argument). Jessica ended that particular fight by grabbing Carol’s beer and chugging the entire thing, while Darcy laughed and Natasha sat back, arms crossed over her chest as though she still wasn’t sure how she had ended up in this viper’s nest of crazy people.

Kate could sympathize with that.

Jessica burped and crushed the beer can against her forehead. “Well, kids,” she said, rising up and grabbing the borrowed trench coat, “this has been fun, but Momma has to work tomorrow. Unlike you crazies, _I_ have a real job.”

Carol looked put out by the loss of her beer, but she stood willingly enough. “Share a cab? This isn’t over, Hill.”

“Bring a better argument to the table than skill over electronics next time,” Maria said, though it looked to Kate like she might even be smiling a little. She walked the PI and the pilot to the door.

Left at the table with the two she had called the “SHIELD Littles,” Natasha shuffled and cut the deck with the proficiency of a blackjack dealer in Monte Carlo. “It’s cute that they pretend they’re not going to the same place,” she said as Maria came back to the table.

“I don’t know why. It’s not like we would judge.”

“Kate might,” Darcy said.

“Hey! I wouldn’t. I’m totally cool with that.”

Darcy grinned. “Deal me out, I’m heading for el baño.”

“I’m totally cool with whatever,” Kate told Natasha and Maria. “And you two, whatever your relationship is, too.” After all, they were infamous around SHIELD for being roommates. 

“Nothing to worry about there. Maria’s married to her job and I prefer men.” Natasha dealt them each a card for blind man’s buff. 

“We’re roommates, for the record, because she came to stay with me for a week and never left.” Maria got up to grab another beer from the fridge, depositing another Coke at Kate’s elbow as she did so. As she sat, she picked up her card and held it against her forehead. It was the six of clubs, which was marginally worse than the eight of hearts Natasha had stuck in the brim of her poker visor. “Can’t seem to get rid of her.”

They placed their bets—Kate bet low, not wanting to let them know their cards were middling—and were in the second round when Darcy came back in from the bathroom. She had a paperback book in her hand. “Sorry—I snooped,” she said, without sounding apologetic in the slightest. “I thought only scientists building rainbow bridges went nuts over this book.”

“It’s a good book.” Maria tossed two chips onto the pot, which nearly made Kate wince. Maybe her card wasn’t as good as she thought it was.

“I just can’t see you being into young adult.”

“It’s not a young adult book,” Natasha said, taking a long sip of beer.

“It’s not? Wait, you’ve read it?”

Maria helped herself to some of the chips. “If it’s in this apartment, she’s read it.”

Kate, who hadn’t imagined that the Black Widow had time to read a lot of books, gave the book in Darcy’s hand a second look: _A Wrinkle in Time_ by Madeleine L’Engle. It wasn’t something she’d encountered before, but she was the first to admit that school and reading for fun were not two of her strong suits. She’d rather be shooting something, which was why Clint had picked her to be his intern.

“Looks like a young adult book,” Darcy said, looking at Natasha.

“Appearances are deceptive. Give it a try. You might like it.”

“Pass. I’ve still got the copy of ‘The Pale King’ I borrowed from my neighbor six months ago. Here. You’re a young adult. You read it.” Darcy put the book in front of Kate. Kate ducked out of the way before the other woman could pat her on the head. “Might do you some good, youngster.”

“I’m only like two years younger than you.”

“And yet, still not old enough to buy beer.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t drink you under the table, old lady.”

“This exchange is adorable and all, but perhaps you could place your bet now,” Natasha said, and she sounded both supremely bored and amused by their antics at the same time. Kate wondered how she could do that.

She set the book, which had a cover straight out of the 1960s or something, to the side and tossed her bet into the pot, which made Maria raise and Natasha fold. It wasn’t until an hour later, when she had five dollars of hard-won money from Darcy in her pocket, that the game finally closed out. “Enjoy the book, kiddo,” Darcy said as she bundled into her coat to leave. She laughed when Kate flipped her off.

“C’mon, I’ll set up the couch for you,” Natasha said as Maria began to clear up the poker table.

“I don’t need to stay here. I can handle myself,” Kate said.

“You don’t even have a hotel room yet. And Barton would kill us if we let his intern wander around this late,” Maria said. “I’m heading back to the carrier in the morning, so I can give you a lift to the airport.”

“It’s a comfortable couch,” Natasha said. “We’ve had many a Hawkeye crash there before.”

Kate, about to point out yet again that she was perfectly fine in Brooklyn on her own, thought about it. She’d crashed in stranger places than Maria Hill’s apartment, and a ride to the airport would actually save her a lot of hassle in the morning. “Well, since you insist.”

“Good.” Maria picked up the book Darcy had teased her over and tossed it to Kate. “That can keep you company since we’re ancient and don’t own a TV.”

“Didn’t peg either of you for nerds.”

“The term you’re looking for is smart, and kickass,” Natasha said, and patted Kate on the shoulder on the way to collecting blankets and a pillow for her. “How’d you end up with that one, Hill?”

“End up?” Kate asked.

“Maria collects books that she never reads.” The words were a little muffled by the fact that Natasha was half-buried in a linen closet.

“Hey, you try keeping up with Fury sometime before you judge me and my reading habits.” 

“Excuses, excuses,” Natasha said.

“And I got it at a second-hand shop. It was in a box of other books—I think I paid five bucks for the box. Doesn’t mean it’s not good.” With a last, significant look at Kate, Maria headed back to her bedroom. 

That night, Kate Bishop fell asleep on Maria Hill’s couch reading Meg Murry’s story and wondering why Natasha didn’t think _A Wrinkle in Time_ was a young adult book.

 

 

_The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book_

With anybody else, he would have turned down assistance, but Natasha had seen Clint Barton at his lowest and likely would yet again, so when she half-carried, half-dragged him to the couch in her apartment, he let her without a single complaint. The plastic sheet she’d thrown across it to protect the cushions from his blood crinkled as he laid down on his stomach.

“Been a helluva week,” he mumbled into the cushions. “Helluva week, Tasha.”

He couldn’t see her face, but he _knew_ she was pursing her lips at him with that super-serious look she got whenever she couldn’t decide if she wanted to deflect his statements with levity or not. “Yes,” was all she said. “Stay put. I’m going to get the medkit so we can finally get the rest of that window out of your arm.”

She was exaggerating, but Clint was too exhausted out to argue. His body felt like a rag, soaked for days and then wrung out so that it was bone-dry, bled of the poison that had infested his mind and everything important along with it. Within twenty seconds, he felt himself drifting. It had been days since he’d slept and every sense cried for it, but he still felt embarrassment that Natasha had to touch his shoulder to wake him. 

“I need to take the glass out,” she said, completely businesslike. “Here, take these.”

Clint opened one eye to stare at the two white pills she held out. “What are those?”

“They’re Vitamin D, what do you think they are? You went through a plate-glass window and brought most of it with you.”

“EMTs patched me up before s’warma,” Clint said. “Don’t like drugs.”

Natasha gave him such a long-suffering look that he sighed and swallowed the pills dry. They tasted like chalk that had been dipped in acid. “Happy now?”

“I’m doing a jig of pure ecstasy.” He heard her rustling around, no doubt rummaging through the medical kit. “Though I’m not going to lie, you do look like you could use some Vitamin D.”

“Taking care of myself wasn’t a high priority under the mind-control.” Thinking about it, all of the things he had done to colleagues and people he respected, had him tensing all over. Natasha laid a hand on his shoulder, and it was enough of an anchor that he forced himself to relax. “Though I think I drank an orange juice once.”

“Must’ve been the mind control. You hate orange juice. Little pinch.”

It felt more like a hornet sting against his already inflamed back, but Clint gritted his teeth as Natasha injected the topical anesthetic. How many times had they skipped the hospital, choosing to patch each other up instead? How many times had he been the one kneeling beside this very same couch, bandaging wounds? Often enough, certainly, for Maria to sigh and tell them, “If you’re going to make a habit of this, don’t bleed all over everything.” They’d bought the sheet out of consideration.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“No worse than Bangkok. Try not to move too much.”

“Bangkok? It took me three weeks to recover from Bangkok!”

“I said it was better, didn’t I?”

“I hate Bangkok.” A wave of drowsiness made his eyelids flutter closed. “Can’t find a good cheeseburger in Bangkok.”

“As ever, I do not understand your obsession with finding cheeseburgers in every town we visit.”

Every thought in Clint’s brain separated itself from every other thought, making him follow a fine gossamer string to put a sentence together. “That’s because you’re a godless heathen,” he said, and promptly fell asleep.

Dreams, either half-remembered or half-forgotten but all coated in the saccharine melody he recognized as being drug-induced, plagued him, but he slept. He woke hours later in a puddle of his own drool to find that the light had returned and Natasha was changing his bandages. “Shh,” she told him, and he fell asleep again.

When he woke again, Natasha was no longer there. The clock on the shelf told him it was 8:17, though the blinds were drawn, so he didn’t know if that was a.m. or p.m. There was a note and a bowl with a can of Campbell’s soup in it on top of the coffee table. 

_Hawkeye,_  
 _Coulson’s alive. False alarm. Eat the soup, get some sleep. I’ll be back around 9:30._  
 _\- Nat_  
 _PS – Maria left you a book to read so you don’t play target practice with her curtains again._

Coulson had been dead? Apparently he’d missed some things. Clint rubbed his forehead—a bad idea, as Natasha had whacked him during their fight—and moved the note aside to see what Maria had left him. It was a book of comics, ones he vaguely recognized. Some kind of cartoon tiger and a little blond boy were on the front of the book.

“Nice. Comics. Not even a real book,” he said, picking up the bowl and the soup. He only limped a little as he made his way to the microwave. “Making fun of the carnie’s inability to read. Thanks, Hill.”

At least the soup was Chicken and Stars, his favorite. The can wasn’t open, which meant that Natasha hadn’t laced the soup (after the incident in Cambodia, he wasn’t going to put anything beyond her), so Clint took his small comforts and sat at the table, eating every drop of the soup even though it burned his abused throat. 

Given the state he’d left the Helicarrier in, he was surprised Maria had even had time to drop by her apartment. Thanks to the painkillers Natasha had forced on him, he hadn’t heard her come in. Maybe it was a relief—the last time they’d seen each other face to face, he’d been doing his damndest to put a bullet through her head. It was just the first in a long line of conversations he knew he’d have to have in the coming days. At least there wasn’t a TV in the apartment (no matter how much he whined during poker night, Maria stood firm) and Natasha had obviously taken his phone, so he was in a bubble, separated from what was going on in the world.

Maybe Maria had just thought he’d want something light-hearted and mindless. Maybe she was softening him up for when he came back to work and had a court martial awaiting him.

“Screw that,” he said to the wall. He deposited his bowl in the sink and limped back to the couch, where he had a stare-off with the bottle of painkillers Natasha had left for him. None of the cuts from the glass had been deep, but they were sore and they itched. He’d put up with worse. And the people who hadn’t lived because of what he’d done—what Loki had done to them—he’d bet they would give anything to deal with some itchiness.

_Don’t do this to yourself._

Annoyed because he was now hearing Natasha in his head and he’d had enough people knocking about in there to last him a lifetime, Clint knocked the bottle of pills to the side. He picked up the book Maria had left and wrenched open the first page as though he could somehow channel all of his anger into some dumb cartoon about a boy and his tiger.

He opened to the copyright page. There were words on it, written in marker and handwriting he recognized from years of having to rewrite mission reports.

 _Maria—_  
 _I know you like Abbott and Costello, but I think this works for when you need a laugh, too_.  
 _\- Phil_

Clint felt his rage deflate like a popped balloon. Coulson had given this book to Maria, and she’d left it for him. It had never been about making fun of the fact that he hadn’t learned to read until he was older. She’d given him the book to cheer him up, as Coulson had done for her.

For a long moment, he stared at Coulson’s words—Coulson who, according to Natasha, was not dead—and finally began to process everything that had happened to him since the awful blue space cube had begun to excite a bunch of now-dead scientists in New Mexico. He thought about days spent with thoughts and urges that weren’t his own, fighting Natasha, fighting his colleagues. Coming back to himself, facing the Chitauri. Working with the Avengers, eating shawarma.

Then he turned the page.

 

 

_Millennium Pages, Kings County Phonebook_

“She’s not answering her cell, and I can’t raise her on the landline. Steve—”

“I’m on it.” Steve Rogers pushed himself to run hard, almost harder than the last time he’d raced through Brooklyn, which had been over half a century before and barefoot besides. It was after two in the morning and Natasha’s call had woken him from a dead sleep, but he was wide awake now. “I’m almost to the building.”

“Be careful. He’ll have backup.” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. He didn’t know if it was Natasha hacking into some kind of computer system, or breathing, or praying. He was too busy running. “And don’t go in the front door. He’ll be expecting somebody, but maybe not this fast.”

“Fire escape?” Steve asked.

Natasha rattled off a list of numbers: the code for the window alarm. He filed it away and pushed himself, wishing he’d thought to grab his Bluetooth earpiece. When the Black Widow called in the middle of the night with news that her enemies have found her apartment, there wasn’t time to waste with niceties. Especially when said Black Widow was in Bucharest trying to track down a cocaine dealer that had been giving SHIELD trouble and her roommate wasn’t picking up.

“I’m rerouting a satellite and seeing if I can get thermal imaging,” Tony Stark said, “but it’s taking some time. JARVIS, how many people at NASA are we going to piss off if…”

Steve, figuring he wouldn’t understand whatever Tony was talking about anyway, tuned out the genius and his weird robotic manservant and focused on running. SHIELD had given him an apartment only ten blocks away from the place Maria Hill and Natasha Romanoff had shared for years—a place neither of them really stayed at. But according to Natasha, Maria was there at the moment, and if she was in the apartment when Emil Luzhkov found it, even her rather impressive set of hand-to-hand combat skills weren’t going to be much help.

“I see your building,” Steve said. “Going around to the fire escape.”

He slowed from a sprint to a trot, not wanting to look overly suspicious in case Luzhkov had men posted outside of the building. He didn’t see anybody, but he didn’t have Natasha’s skills in modern reconnaissance yet.

He had to jump for the bottom ladder on the fire escape. “How’s that satellite, Tony?” he asked as he took the steps up the fire escape two at a time.

“Rendering. God save me from proprietary drivers and lazy idiots who can’t calibrate a satellite properly. What is this, the fifties? Also, Romanoff, we might want to warn Fury that the FBI are about to be very displeased with us.”

“What else is new?” Clint Barton popped his gum. He and a group of SHIELD agents had mobilized from the New York headquarters, but they were still ten minutes out. “I’m not picking up any chatter on the Bratva channels, Nat.”

“He’s smarter than that,” Natasha said. “He knows I monitor those channels.”

Steve reached the landing for the fire escape and peered inside. It was strange looking into Natasha’s bedroom when she wasn’t there, he reflected. It was also empty. “I don’t see anybody,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I’m going in, going radio silent until I know more.”

“Got it.”

Steve keyed the combination into the pad and slid the window up. It was a tight fit with his shoulders, and he ended up tumbling onto the bed, swallowing a curse. He straightened, pulling his gun free of his waistband, and crept silently out the door and down the hallway. A quick look into Maria’s bedroom showed that though her blankets had been disturbed, the room was empty. There wasn’t any sign of a struggle, so he moved on, walking as silently as he could down the hallway and into the kitchen/living room area.

It was a toss-up as to who was more surprised when he came around the corner: him or the Russian thug pointing a gun at him. 

“Oh boy,” Steve said, and threw his phone at the other man’s wrist, knocking the hand with the gun away. He ducked the wild swing the man gave in response and hit him with a body-shot to the side of the ribcage, catching the phone as he did so.

Whoever the man was—Steve didn’t know if it was Luzhkov, didn’t much care at the moment, either—he had good reflexes. He took a fall over Natasha’s coffee table and popped up right away. Steve dove out of the way as three or four bullets chewed the wall where he’d been a second before. He returned fire, snapping off a couple of shots, but the angle was completely wrong, and he missed.

“So if they didn’t know I was here before, they do now. No sign of Hill,” he said.

“Are you injured?”

“No. It’s just the one guy. And he’s a—” Two more bullet holes appeared in the wall outside of the bedroom Steve had rolled into for cover. “Terrible shot. You’re probably going to have to redecorate, Nat.”

“We’ll probably just move. Though Maria’s going to be pissed you tried to ventilate our place.”

“I’ll worry about that later,” Steve said, and peeked around the corner. If his enemy made it into the hallway, he’d have the advantage of being able to reach around and fire into the bedroom. Plus, his backup was likely closer than Steve’s was. It meant Steve didn’t have the luxury of waiting him out, and he’d have to go head-to-head. 

He’d had better ideas in his life.

“ETA is eight minutes,” Clint said. 

Steve slipped the phone into his pocket and dropped to a crouch. If he went low, there was a chance he could use the split-second in which his opponent needed to alter his aim. It wasn’t much, but with his shield sitting pretty ten blocks away and back-up too far out, it was all that he had.

Steve let another round of shots puncture the wall, counted to three in his head, and rolled out. He lunged up onto his knees and let out a startled out, yanking his gun away before he could take the shot. The man he wasn’t fighting didn’t get the same chance. Even as Steve was coming out of his roll, the man aimed—and promptly did a face-plant into the coffee table when Maria Hill, who’d somehow managed to sneak up behind him, knocked him on the back of the head with something large and heavy.

Steve and Maria watched the man crumple to the ground.

Steve gaped, but the lieutenant straightened with ease. “Thanks for that. I was waiting for somebody to distract him so I could do that,” she said, dropping the object in her hands—some kind of book—onto the table. She pulled some cable ties out of the pocket of the bathrobe she was wearing.

“Were you—were you in here, hiding, this whole time?” Steve asked, not sure if he really believed what he was seeing. “Where?”

“Can’t tell you.” Maria Hill seemed amused. “Why do you think I’m so fond of this place? I was going to wait him out, but you seemed like you needed a hand.”

“Ah, yes. Uh, thanks.”

“Anytime.” 

Maria Hill rose from tying up their captive, and Steve finally processed what she’d hit the man with. “Is that a phonebook?” he asked.

“It was the best thing I had available. Something wrong with that?”

“I just—I just thought people didn’t use those things anymore. Stark said that everybody’s got one in their phones.”

“Clearly, Stark doesn’t know everything. Speaking of phones, are you going to answer that?” Maria pointed at Steve’s pants pocket, and he belatedly remembered that he’d been on the phone with Tony, Clint, and Natasha. From the volume of the squawking through the phone, it sounded like they were annoyed. “I’m going to get changed in case we get more company. You watch him.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, you’re kind of scary,” Steve felt the need to tell her as she passed.

She gave him the barest hint of a smile before she disappeared into the bedroom, and he raised the phone to answer his team.


End file.
